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La-Z-Boy enjoyed tremendous success for much of its 80-year old history, but it was suffering from an identity crisis with the all-important female furniture shopper. Women thought they “knew” La-Z-Boy: that overstuffed, old-fashioned recliner, that more often than not they didn’t want front and center in their living rooms.

After tremendous growth in the 60’s and 70’s, La-Z-Boy launched its own Furniture Galleries retail stores in the 80’s with a diversified product lineup, hoping to increase its appeal to women. That didn’t happen. While the brand dominated the motion furniture segment by capturing 25 percent of overall recliner sales within the category, only 4 percent of consumers shopped at La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries looking for stationary furniture, despite advertising that tried to expand awareness of La-Z-Boy beyond recliners.

That was a problem because stationary furniture is the largest segment within the furniture category. To continue to grow the brand needed to shift deep-rooted perceptions and convince female consumers that La-Z-Boy offers more than recliners.

Doug Collier

The solution was to sign up a female brand ambassador as spokesperson. That was somewhat surprising for a company that used mostly male celebrities like Joe Namath and Johnny Carson in the past. It was also a gamble as the company risked eroding its equity among men, but its dominance of the motion segment suggested diversifying its appeal.

Doug Collier, La-Z-Boy’s CMO and President, International, told me that after extensive search the company settled on Brooke Shields as its new spokesperson because, “We felt that she can put a modern, stylish face on a company associated with a chair favored by her parents’ generation. With Brooke Shields we set out to raise awareness among women that we make something other than just recliners.” Brooke also set the right tone for the brand: “She came across as down to earth while having great style.”

The strategy is working. Not only is La-Z-Boy is gaining share overall, but its sales of stationary furniture, the larger segment of the furniture category and the one previously underdeveloped by the brand, are growing faster than recliners.

I asked Collier if he ever considered changing the name of the product to overcome its narrow appeal to men, the way Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC to deal with concerns about fried food. He replied that it’s a question he is asked often, but he did not. “La-Z-Boy has an amazing equity of comfort, value and friendliness and almost 100 percent awareness. I felt that if we can just pivot it a little bit, we could build on these tremendous strengths instead of building a new brand from scratch.”

Instead of walking away from its equity, La-Z-Boy embraced it. The brand leveraged its strength as the ultimate in comfortable furniture, and extended the “Comfort” positioning across its entire product line, transitioned from a recliner to a more emotional brand known for living a comfortable life overall.